1st Adventure in Artisan Bread Making

The other day I made some homemade wheat bread for the first time ever and it was delicious! The only problem was that it was soo time consuming. Letting the bread rise, then punching it down, then pouring it into a loaf pan, only to let it rise again... This was an all day process.

Fortunately, I came across this book: Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. After I purchased it I found out they also have a healthy version and since I plan on having some bread around here pretty regularly I also decided to spring for Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day.

The basic idea is that you combine the main ingredients, let them rise 2 hours, then put in your refrigerator for up to 2 weeks. You just grab a chunk of dough from your bucket any time after that and in five minutes you've formed it and just need to let it rise about 40 min, before baking it up... Sounds pretty good to me! :)

On my first go, I did everything incorrectly.

I ordered these special plastic food storage containers they recommend to store the dough in, but it's been days and I've been looking outside my window multiple times a day hoping they will magically appear on my doorstep. alas- no containers yet = no bread. Boo! Well yesterday I received a call from my friend asking if I could watch her 3 kiddos (5 yr old, 3 yr old, & 6 mth old) while she and her hubs attended a screening for one of his movies he's worked on. Her sitter fell through, so of course I said yes!

I decided I could throw together a lasagna for the gang. The idea of lasagna kind of put me over the top and I just decided oh heck with the big plastic regulation dough storage container- I'm going to just use my trusty glass bowl with seran wrap on top.

Once the dough began rising it quickly started smooshing (not a word- but should be) up against the top of the bowl- oh well.

Then they recommend that if it's your first time you refrigerate the dough overnight before handling, well... I decided to ignore that little piece of wisdom as well...

I formed a cut off portion of the dough into a boule, let it rest and rise for the recommended 40 minutes 30 minutes. cut some slashes into the loaf and prepared it for the oven.

At this point all the kids were here with my friend and I decided to just put the loaf on some parchment paper wax paper and throw it into the screaming hot 450 degree oven. Oh man, I don't know what I was thinking... the whole house started smoking. I'm so thankful my friend is so relaxed and has a sense of humor as I ran around removing the wax paper, opening windows, waving towels under our fire alarms all in an effort to prevent us from having 5 screaming kids on our hands. Thankfully the alarms did not sound, the smoke cleared and soon the house was filled with delicious aromas of homemade artisan bread!

Here's adorable baby J and his beautiful momma - totally chillin

Here he is again flashing those baby blues and bright smile at me. Little did he know his mom was entrusting him to me (the crazy bread lady) tonight!

At the end of 30 minutes, this is what ended up popping out of my oven!

Apparently, the way this recipe works is that it gets more flavorful the longer it sits in your refrigerator. They actually suggest you not clean your food container, so that way the new dough takes on the flavor of the old dough and it starts developing its own sour dough tones.

This is how they suggest you store it (upside down on cut edge) uncovered.

all in all a worthwhile first experiment.

BTW - No children were harmed during the baking of this bread. It really was delicious and tomorrow night I'm using the same dough to make pizza.

To learn more about this book, technique, or to find the main recipe click here